Prettier than a peacock Costume

Items needed:

• Mask (found at a garage sale $.50)
• Cardboard (free)
• Dress (Thrift Store $2.00)
• gloves (Thrift Store $.25)
• Blue food coloring
• vinegar
• feather dusters shades of blue and green (store 10@ .$97)
• peacock feathers (local Farmer - FREE)
• Hot glue
• elastic
• shears
• Stapler

First we had to cut the dress down to fit a 9 year old lil girl. Instead of cutting it straighten, I just cut the front to her length and left the back long to make tail of the peacock. Then, we cut off all the feathers off the feather dusters and starting at the bottom of the tail, we stapled and stapled AND stapled all the feathers (overlapping) on the back of the dress. Working upward into an upside down "V" shape to give the illusion of a peacock tail. At the very edge of the tail, we glued peacock feather "eyes" on the underside. At the top of the upside down "V" shape, we stapled various lengths of full peacock feathers to finish the tail off.

For the wings, I cut "wing" shapes out of cardboard. I measured around Parker's arms at the top, elbow, and wrist, then cut 3 pieces of elastic for each wing. Making a hoop out of each piece of elastic, I stapled one piece of elastic at the top, middle, and bottom so it would hold her "wings" in place on her arms. Again we started hot gluing feathers, this time to the wings. We started with the longer peacock eyes, layering them to cover the cardboard. To create the secondary feathers closest to her body, we mixed the blue and grean feathers from two feather dusters.

She didn't want anyone to see her hands so I took white gloves and in a pinch, dyed them blue. I mixed 2 cups water and a small bottle of blue food coloring and 2 Tablespoons of vinegar in a saucepan. I boiled the gloves for 30 minutes to really set the blue color in the gloves, then laid them on a towel to dry.

For the mask, it had the longer blue feathers on it and the green sparkly front. So to make it look more like a peacock, we added the small peacock eyes around the front of the mask, some lighter blue ones on the top of the mask, and on the front with hot glue.

All said and done, it took about 4 hours from start to finish. For under $15.00 I had one little girl who was prouder and prettier than any peacock around.

This year, she is talking chicken...EEEK!!